The Big Short Movie Review

The Big Short Movie Review

Four denizens of the world of high-finance predict the credit and housing bubble collapse of the mid-2000s, and decide to take on the big banks for their greed and lack of foresight.

C’est incroyable!

The Big Short was so good that it has me expressing my contentment in different languages. Easily one of the best movies I have seen in the last several years, it is truly incredible how, what otherwise could have been a relatively boring documentary, is absolutely captivating.

The Big Short’s biggest strength is in its ability to tell a true story in a factual, educational and highly entertaining way —3 ideal traits that most documentaries rarely accomplish at the same time. The movie tackles some of the most confusing financial schemes and manages to unravel them in a way that limits audience confusion. There are some very unique ways of delivering these concept break-downs contained within, though I won’t go into detail to spoil anything. Suffice it to say that you are much more likely to pay attention than you did in finance class.

Of course, the performances also helped carry the movie. Absolutely star-studded, it is quite rare to see 4 A-list actors Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt in the same movie. Hopefully the actors agreed to lower wages in the name of art — otherwise, the payroll for The Big Short must have been through the roof!

Christians Bale’s performance was a standout (as usual). He plays a genius that has more than a few oddities and he nails it. Pay attention to his eyes at the beginning of the movie and you’ll see just how committed to the role he was. It was nice to see him actually putting his acting chops to good use after the Dark Knight movies (don’t get me wrong, they are great movies, but they didn’t demand much of him from an acting standpoint).

To conclude, I give you a list of all of the other amazing things about The Big Short:

Brilliant editing that kept the movie from ever getting dry

Very clever writing — including various “narrator” segments, engaging explanations, and plenty of broken 4th walls

Unique cinematography. A few times it felt like they were trying too hard to get a unique shot and it just didn’t quite work (other times it worked very well)